Friday, March 19, 2010

DAVY CROCKETT'S COONSKIN CAP CRAZE

From Wikipedia:
In the 20th century, the iconic association [of the coonskin cap] was in large part due to Disney's television program 'Disneyland' and the first three "Davy Crockett" episodes starring Fess Parker. In the episodes, which once again made Crockett into one of the most popular men in the country, the frontier hero was portrayed wearing a coonskin cap. The show spawned several 'Disneyland' Davy Crockett sequels as well as other similar shows and movies, with many of them featuring Parker as the lead actor. Parker went on to star in a 'Daniel Boone' television series (1964-1970), again wearing a coonskin cap.

Crockett's new popularity initiated a fad among boys all over the United States as well as a Davy Crockett craze in the United Kingdom. The look of the cap that was marketed to young boys was typically simplified; it was usually a faux fur lined skull cap with a raccoon tail attached. A variation was marketed to young girls as the Polly Crockett hat. It was similar in style to the boys' cap, including the long tail, but was made of all-white fur (faux or possibly rabbit). At the peak of the fad, coonskin caps sold at a rate of 5,000 caps a day.


By the end of the 1950s, Crockett's popularity waned and the fad slowly died out.
BCnU!

2 comments:

Sean Cleary said...

Is that a childhood photo? Did your mother move the family tv into the bathroom to get you to potty train? :)

Toby O'B said...

I wondered who might think it was me. I never suspected it would be YOU! LOL

No, it's a screen capture from a documentary about the 'Mickey Mouse Club' and Disney TV in general.

And we had a claw-footed bathtub when I was that age....